• Search the entire web (Continuously growing and updated websites and search engines listed by topic)
• Where to start for searching the web for manufacturing information? (by Jim Corlett)
• Polymer processing on the web (by Jim Corlett)
• Rapid prototyping information on the web (by Jim Corlett)
• Product design (incl. industrial design) on the web (by Jim Corlett)
• Robotics information on the web (by Jim Corlett)
• In preparation: MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) information on the web (by Jim Corlett)
• In preparation: Demanufacturing and DFE (Design For the Environment) information on the web (by Jim Corlett and Paul G Ranky)
• In preparation: About EEVL, The Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (by Linda Kerr)
• More to come...

• Introduction
• Searching for sites
• Subject gateways
• Local lists
• Resource collections
• Global search engines
• Conclusion
• Summary

Introduction

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This brief article is the first of a series in which I will be looking at resources on the Web covering the world of manufacturing. In future articles, I will cover specific areas of interest to design and manufacturing engineers and managers.

This particular article offers a brief personal overview of the way I go about getting relevant information from non-subscription (i.e. free!) sites on the Web. I search the Web a fair amount during my work, and hope that the following will help some of you to navigate your way in the most efficient manner through the various of search options.

Searching for sites

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There are four main ways I go to find Internet resources:

• via subject gateways,
• local lists,
• resource collections and
• global search engines.

Subject Gateways

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Subject Gateways are usually collections of Web sites which have been reviewed, classified and catalogued to make searching quick and easy, to ensure that only "quality" sites are retrieved and that those sites are focused in one main subject area, so that users know in general what they are getting.

A list of subject gateways can be found at (http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html).

[N.B. Some of the gateways highlighted focus on educational resources in that subject, others on a wider range of resources].

The main gateway I use for engineering/ manufacturing is

EEVL the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/).

Others of relevance include:

• EELS, the Engineering Electronic Library Sweden (http://www.ub2.lu.se/eel/eelhome.html),
• ICE, the Internet Connections for Engineering (http://www.englib.cornell.edu/ice/ice-index.html), and
• CEN, the Canadian Engineering Network (http://www.transenco.com/).

Local Lists

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Local Lists are collections, often compiled by individuals, in very specific subject areas. If one exists in your area of interest, then many of your search problems will be solved. However, they can be hard to find (try using a Subject Gateway first to look for them) and are not guaranteed to be kept up-to-date (people change jobs and interests, etc).

Examples of such sites are:

• Antonio Gorni's Cool Links (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/5978/links.html),
• Robert Ramsdale's Engineering Zone (http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2549/design.htm),
• Wolfgang Schloegl's Virtual Manufacturing (http://www.faps.uni-erlangen.de/persons/schloegl/vm_links.html),
• Wohlers Web World (http://www.wohlersassociates.com/), or
• Franck Lacan's Rapid Prototyping Bookmark ( http://intell-lab.engi.cf.ac.uk/franck/RPB.html).

Similar, but slightly more "official" sites, (often produced by companies or institutions) are specific Resource Guides and Directories, such as the

• Rapid Prototyping Resource Center (http://cadserv.cadlab.vt.edu/bohn/RP.html), or
• CAD/CAM World (http://www.cam.org/~flamy/cadcam.html).

Resource Collections

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Resource Collections, such as Yahoo (http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Engineering/), and the WWW Virtual Library (http://arioch.gsfc.nasa.gov/wwwvl/engineering.html), are subject collections similar to the Subject Gateways, but covering a much wider span of subject areas. They can be very useful.

The problem I find is that they are US-biased (OK if you're in the States!), the coverage of specific subjects is uneven and in many fields it is not as detailed as that of the Subject Gateways. Indeed, some sites proclaiming subject access to the Web simply do not include manufacturing or engineering within their range of subjects listed.

Global Search Engines

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Global Search Engines, such as

• Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.digital.com/),
• Infoseek (http://www.infoseek.com/),
• HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com/) or
• Lycos (http://www-english.lycos.com/) are incredibly powerful tools capable of searching millions of Web pages in a few seconds.

They are useful for very specific subject searches, not so good for browsing.

Their main defects spring from the way the results of a search are presented; the list of resources found can be very unfocused and unselective, often leading to time-consuming and frustrating efforts by the user trying to find relevant sites. I think people quickly find their own favourites from among the long list of those available.

Useful lists of Resource Collections and Search Engines can be found on many, often academic, sites.

My own institution has a comprehensive coverage, on their Electronic Library Resources Exploring the Internet pages (http://www.ntu.ac.uk/lis/helpin.htm). This site also provides the full text of some articles which compare and contrast the various Global Search Engines.

Conclusion

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The amount of information freely available on the Web is truly phenomenal. I choose to go to subject gateways if I want to browse for relevant subjects. Here, on sites like EEVL, I should pick up local lists, as well as courseware, company and product information, full text documents, e-journals, etc. If I don't find enough of what I want, I then move on to some of the resource collections.

If I need a very specific piece of information, I try one or two of the global search engines (or one of the options on EEVL which allows searching of actual Web sites and their links in specific areas (UK sites or free e-journals) rather than just the EEVL database).

I'm sure you will develop (or have developed) you own Web search style - happy hunting!

Jim Corlett

(The Editor: You can email to Jim via: cimware@cimwareukandusa.com. For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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A summary of all references / hot-web-links mentioned in this article

http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html

http://www.eevl.ac.uk

http://www.ub2.lu.se/eel/eelhome.html

http://www.englib.cornell.edu/ice/ice-index.html

http://www.transenco.com

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/5978/links.html

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2549/design.htm

http://www.faps.uni-erlangen.de/persons/schloegl/vm_links.html

http://www.wohlersassociates.com

http://intell-lab.engi.cf.ac.uk/franck/RPB.html

http://cadserv.cadlab.vt.edu/bohn/RP.html

http://www.cam.org/~flamy/cadcam.html

http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Engineering

http://arioch.gsfc.nasa.gov/wwwvl/engineering.html

http://www.altavista.digital.com

http://www.infoseek.com

http://www.hotbot.com

http://www-english.lycos.com

http://www.ntu.ac.uk/lis/helpin.htm

(For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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Jump to top

My first article in this series tried to point a path through the jungle of Web search tools towards the most efficient way to approach Web searching, in general terms &endash; i.e. which of the many search tools to use in what order. This article &endash; on polymer processing - and succeeding articles highlight sites on specific topics of potential interest to manufacturing and design engineers.

Contents

• Local lists, resource guides and FAQs
• Institutions, Associations and Companies
• Research Centres & Higher Education
• Full-text, e-Journals & Mailing Lists
• Reference Material
• Summary

Local lists, resource guides and FAQs

The introductory article mentioned local lists, collections, often compiled by individuals, in very specific subject areas, and slightly more "official", (often produced by companies) specific resource guides and directories.

One such local list in the polymer area is the The Unofficial Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) Homepage (http://www.net-master.net/~ptfedave/), while resource guides include

• The Polyvinyl Chloride Centre (http://www.ramsay.co.uk/pvc/) or
• Plastics Resource: Information on Plastics and the Environment (http://www2.plasticsresource.com/).

Other, more general sites include:

• Rapra Technology Ltd (http://www.rapra.net) , which covers all aspects of rubber and plastics, including a free searchable directory of polymer companies.
• Other company directories include the country-specific, such as Brasil Plastics on the Internet (http://www.plastico.com.br/) and the international, such as Polysort.com (http://www.polysort.com/), among others.

Further sites worth highlighting in this category are:

• Polymers DotCom (http://www.polymers.com/) which includes company information but also has a mass of other useful information, including full-text items and many links, to both sites and "valuable" content within sites; and the
• PTC Plastics Reference Library (http://www.lexmark.com/ptc/ptc3.html), which contains, inter alia, a full-text textbook (Introduction to Plastics), a dictionary of polymer abbreviations, and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.
• Separate FAQ sites can be found at http://www.irc.leeds.ac.uk/irc/spfaq/ (Sci-Polymer FAQ) and at
• http://www.phoenix.net/~cobb/castables-faq.html (Castable Polyurethanes FAQ).
•  

European sites which may be of interest include

• the Spanish PlastUnivers (http://www.plastunivers.es/) and the
• Italian Plastica.it (http://www.plastic.it/).

Institutions, Associations and Companies

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Institutions, Associations and Companies include the following:

• The Society of Plastics Engineers (http://www.4spe.org/) is a leading international institution, based in the US, with over 37,500 members worldwide, and has an excellent list of links to sites of related interest, as do many of the organisations mentioned below.
• The Polymer Processing Society (PPS) (http://www.poly-eng.uakron.edu/PPS/PPS.html) aims to provide a discussion forum for the worldwide community of engineers and scientists in the field.
• In the UK, the Institute of Materials (http://www.instmat.co.uk/) has a Polymer Division as one of its Divisional Boards, while the Canadian Plastics Institute may be found at http://www.cpia.ca/.

Examples of Trade Associations include the

• Association of Rotational Molders (http://www.rotomolding.org),
• the British Plastics Federation (http://www.bpf.co.uk),
• the European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers (http://www.pvc.org/), and,
• in the US, the Society of the Plastics Industry (http://www.socplas.org/).

Individual Companies (see also Resource Guides, above) often just provide product and company details; two examples, in the area of rotational moulding/vacuum moulding, are Rotosystems Ltd (http://www.rotosytems.com/) and J R Dare Ltd (http://www.jrdare.co.uk/).

Other companies offer that bit more:

• Endura Plastics Inc (http://www.endura.com/), which includes an Injection Moulding Primer, a Thermoplastic Primer and a Thermoplastic Selection Guide, among other offerings;
• Moldflow (http://www.moldflow.com/), from which users can download demonstration software;
• cpm GmbH (http://home.t-online.de/home/cpm.eq/index.htm) in Germany, which includes some full-text papers;
• and the C-MOLD Information Center (http://www.cmold.com/), which provides a c-mold resin database searchable by generic resin name, manufacturer or tradename; and many others.

Research Centres & Higher Education

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Research Centres provide details of the latest research activities.

Examples in the UK are

• the Rotational Moulding Research Centre (http://wwwqub.ac.uk/mpeng/mmeng/rotomould/rotoweb.htm/) at the Queen's University Belfast;
• the North of England Plastics Processing Consortium (http://www.me.umist.ac.uk/neppco/neppco.htm) ;
• the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Polymer Science and Technology (http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dch0www2/) involving the Universities of Bradford , Durham and Leeds, and the
• Institute of Polymer Technology and Materials Engineering at Loughborough University (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/iptme/).

In Europe, there are, among others:

• the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (http://www.iap.fhg.de/), the
• Institute of Plastics Processing at Aachen University of Technology (http://www.rwth-aachen.de/ikv/Ww/english.html),
• Institute of Polymer Research Dresden (http://www.ipfdd.de/), the
• Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research (http://www.mpip-mainz.mpg.de/), and the
• Institute of Polymers at ETH Zurich (http://mat.ethz.ch/d-werk/ifp/ifp.html).
• A comprehensive list of contact details (including Web pages where available) of polymer scientists in Germany may be found at http://www.chemie.uni-marburg.de/~gdch/polymerchemiker.html

In the USA, for those wishing to study/research in North America, the Polymer Science Internet Directory (http://www.polymer.org/) aims to link the Web sites for all public and private PhD-granting Schools and Universities in Canada and the United States with significant research efforts in polymer science and engineering.

Full-text, e-Journals & Mailing Lists

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Full-Text Documents available range from books such as the Introduction to Plastics (http://www.lexmark.com/ptc/book.html) mentioned above to individual articles such as those from Rheometric Scientific (http://www.rheosci.com/apps.htm).

Some documents are also available as part of sites which offer Courseware for users to access.

Examples of such pages are:

• Tutorial on Polymer Composite Molding (http://isl.cps.msu.edu/trp/index.html),
• Polymer Chemistry Hypertext (http://www.umr.edu/~wlf/),
• Polymers and Liquid Crystals: Virtual Textbook and Laboratory (http://www.abalone/cwru.edu/), and
• Plastics (http://www.sdplastics.com/plastics.html) , a tutorial from San Diego Plastics Inc.

Other documents may be found as part of e-journal sites; for example,

• Injection Molding Magazine Online (http://immnet.com/),
• British Rubber and Plastics Online (http://www.polymer-age.co.uk/),
• Modern Plastics (http://www.modplas.com/), or
• Materie Plastiche ed Elastomeri (http://www.ovest.it/mpe/).

For those wishing to interact with others rather than just read, there are a number of mailing/discussion lists, such as the polymer-processing mailing list at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/polymer-processing.

Reference Material

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A wide spectrum of reference material may be found, ranging from

• glossaries (e.g. Glossary of Basic Terms In Polymer Science (http://mat.ethz.ch/d-werk/suter/bt-frames.html)) and the
• dictionary of polymer abbreviations mentioned above,
• to technical information such as that provided on the Materials Engineering Research Laboratory (MERL) pages (http://www.merl-ltd.co.uk/), and to
• searchable databases of materials properties (e.g. MatWeb (http://www.metweb.com/)).

To summarize, this is just a taste of what is available on the Web - there are many others which I could have included. Note that most of these &endash; and many other - resources can be retrieved via the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) at http://www.eevl.ac.uk/.

Jim Corlett

(The Editor: You can email to Jim via: cimware@cimwareukandusa.com. For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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A summary of all references / hot-web-links mentioned in this article

http://www.net-master.net/~ptfedave

http://www.ramsay.co.uk/pvc

http://www2.plasticsresource.com

http://www.rapra.net

http://www.plastico.com.br

http://www.polysort.com

http://www.lexmark.com/ptc/ptc3.html

http://www.lexmark.com/ptc/ptc3.html

http://www.irc.leeds.ac.uk/irc/spfaq

http://www.phoenix.net/~cobb/castables-faq.html

http://www.plastunivers.es

http://www.plastic.it

http://www.4spe.org

http://www.poly-eng.uakron.edu/PPS/PPS.html

http://www.instmat.co.uk

http://www.rotomolding.org

http://www.bpf.co.uk

http://www.pvc.org

http://www.socplas.org

http://www.rotosytems.com

http://www.jrdare.co.uk

http://www.endura.com

http://www.moldflow.com

http://home.t-online.de/home/cpm.eq/index.htm

http://www.cmold.com

http://wwwqub.ac.uk/mpeng/mmeng/rotomould/rotoweb.htm

http://www.me.umist.ac.uk/neppco/neppco.htm

http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dch0www2

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/iptme

http://www.iap.fhg.de

http://www.rwth-aachen.de/ikv/Ww/english.html

http://www.ipfdd.de

http://www.mpip-mainz.mpg.de

http://mat.ethz.ch/d-werk/ifp/ifp.html

http://www.chemie.uni-marburg.de/~gdch/polymerchemiker.html

http://www.polymer.org

http://www.lexmark.com/ptc/book.html

http://www.rheosci.com/apps.htm

http://isl.cps.msu.edu/trp/index.html

http://www.umr.edu/~wlf

http://www.abalone/cwru.edu

http://www.sdplastics.com/plastics.html

http://immnet.com

http://www.polymer-age.co.uk

http://www.modplas.com

http://www.ovest.it/mpe

http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/polymer-processing

http://mat.ethz.ch/d-werk/suter/bt-frames.html

http://www.merl-ltd.co.uk

http://www.metweb.com

http://www.eevl.ac.uk

(For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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Jump to top

My first article in this series tried to point a path through the jungle of Web search tools towards the most efficient way to approach Web searching, in general terms &endash; i.e. which of the many search tools to use in what order. This current article &endash; on rapid prototyping (aka desktop manufacturing, solid freeform fabrication or layered manufacturing) - and other articles in the series will highlight sites on specific topics of potential interest to manufacturing and design engineers.

Contents

• Local lists, resource guides and FAQs
• Associations and Companies
• Research Centres & Higher Education
• Full-text, E-Conferences, E-Journals
• Mailing Lists
• Patents
• Conclusion
• A summary of all references / hot-web-links mentioned in this article

Local lists, resource guides and FAQs

My introductory article mentioned local lists, collections (often compiled by individuals) in very specific subject areas, and slightly more "official" (often produced by companies) specific resource guides and directories.

Several excellent local lists include:

• Rapid Prototyping Bookmark by Franck Lacan (http://intell-lab.engi.cf.ac.uk/franck/RPB.html), the pages offered by
• Terry Wohlers of Wohlers Associates (http://www.wohlersassociates.com/),
• Andrei Novac's Rapid Prototyping Home Page (http://www.cc.utah.edu/~asn8200/rapid.html),
• Zhiwen Zhao's The World of Rapid Prototyping (http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/rpworld.htm), and
• Christian Nelson's Rapid Prototyping Index (http://azizia.dtm-corp.com/~nelson/rpindex1.html)

Other, more general sites include:

• Rapid Prototyping Resource Centre (http://cadserv.cadlab.vt.edu/bohn/RP.html), the
• Rapid Prototyping section of the Engineering Zone (http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2549/proto.htm) and the
• Rapid Prototyping Database (http://www.icom.cz/mcltd/RPdatabase.html)

When looking for resource lists for particular countries, it is often best to start with the local associations or institutions. However, one very good guide, covering Japan, is the Rapid Prototyping from Japan site (http://nak.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/rpjp/), which includes documents outlining the present status of RP in Japan.

Some advice on prototyping may be found on the FAQ on Innovation and Product Development site at http://members.aol.com/RonGraham1/innovate.html.

Associations and Companies

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A useful list of RP associations may be found on the Wohlers Associates site (http://www.wohlersassociates.com/), which announces the Global Alliance of RP Associations (GARPA) and its annual meeting, the Global Summit, formed to encourage on-going sharing of information across international borders.

Among the European sites are the

• UK's Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing Association (http://www.imeche.org.uk/imeche2/rpma/index2.htm), the
• Associazione Italiana di Prototipazione Rapida (http://www.apri-rapid.it/), and the
• Finnish Rapid Prototyping Association (http://ltk.hut.fi/firpa/).

In the USA, the Rapid Prototyping Association of the SME (Society of Manufacturing Engineers) is at http://www.sme.org/rpa/.

Among the interesting sites in the Far East are the Hong Kong Society for Rapid Prototyping Tooling & Manufacturing (http://hkumea.hku.hk/~CRPDT/RP&T.html) and the Australian Rapid Prototyping Association (http://www.adl.dmt.csiro.au/external/arpa/arpahome.htm).

RP processes, and the companies/ organisations associated with them, include:

• 3D Printing (MIT - http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena/org/t/tdp/www/home.html),
• 3D Plotting (Sanders Prototype - http://www.sanders-prototype.com/),
• Direct Shell Production Casting (Soligen - http://www.soligentechnologies.com/),
• Fused Deposition Modelling (Stratasys - http://www.stratasys.com/),
• Laminated Object Manufacturing (Helisys - http://helisys.com/),
• Selective Laser Sintering (DTM - http://www.dtm-corp.com/) ,
• Solid Ground Curing (Cubital - http://www.iquest.net/cubital/), and
• Stereolithography (3D Systems - http://www.3dsystems.com/).
• EOS (http://www.eos-gmbh.de/) is the creator of the Direct Metal Laser-Sintering (DMLS) method, while
• Optomec (http://www.optomec.com/) is responsible for the Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS) process.

Individual companies (see also Resource Guides, above, for much fuller lists) in the RP domain include those offering software and bureau services. Two which do both are Solid Concepts Inc (http://www.solidconcepts.com/) and Materialise N.V. (http://www.materialise.be/). Other companies producing software include DeskArtes Oy in Finland, and Imageware in the States.

There are numerous bureaux providing RP services. A flavour of the sort of thing being offered can be found by looking at sites such as the

• Innovative Manufacturing Centre (http://www.imcuk.org/) in the UK,
• Damvig (http://www.damvig.com/) in Denmark,
• Advantage Engineering (http://www.adveng.on.ca/) in Canada,
• Gruppo Promau (http://www.promau.it/) in Italy,
• KL Technik (http://www.kl-technik.com/) in Germany,
• Applied Rapid Technologies (http://www.artcorp.com/) in the States and
• Valla (http://www.valla.fr/) in France. (A list of bureaux in France can be found on the Multistation site (http://www.multistation.com/Pages/indexeng.htm)).

There are many more. The best way to locate them is via the Resource Guides.

Research Centres & Higher Education

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There are a good number of places undertaking research in RP. Here are just a few to illustrate the range. Once again, others may be traced via the Resource Guides mentioned above.

Those in the United States include:

• the Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute at the Georgia Institute of Technology (http://rpmi.marc.gatech.edu/), the
• Rapid Prototype Development Laboratory at the University of Dayton Research Institute (http://www.udri.udayton.edu/rpdl/), and the
• Rapid Prototyping Laboratory at Stanford University (http://www-rpl.stanford.edu/).

Within Europe, you can find a number of interesting sites in the UK, among them being the

• Centre for Rapid Design and Manufacture at the Faculty of Technology at the Buckinghamshire University College (http://www.buckscol.ac.uk/tech/crdm/crdm.html), the
• School of Engineering and Advanced Technology at Sunderland University (http://blake.sunderland.ac.uk/~ta5sva/research.html), the
• Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick (http://www.wmg.warwick.ac.uk/Research/index.htm) and the
• Centre for Rapid Prototyping in Manufacturing at the University of Nottingham (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/meom/Research/rp/index.html).

In Germany, there are the Institute of Industrial Technology and Applied Work Science at the

• University of Bremen - Rapid Prototyping Site (http://www.biba.uni-bremen.de/groups/rp/rp_page.html), and the
• Institut für Kunststoffprüfung und Kunststoffkunde (IKP) (http://www.ikp2.uni-stuttgart.de/RP_IKP/Eindex.html)

The Rapid Prototyping Research Group Sweden at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) (http://www.cadcam.kth.se/public/computer/fff/RP.html) does offer sections on Rapid Prototyping in Europe and Rapid Prototyping in North America, together with a list RP machines in Scandinavia, but this page was last updated in 1996.

For a more up-to-date listing in these areas and also Asia and the Far East, see Zhiwen Zhao's The World of Rapid Prototyping (http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/RP_RESEA.HTM)

In the Far East can be found the

• Center of Laser Rapid Forming at Tsinghua University (http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Lab/8600/clrf.htm), and RP at the
• University of Hong Kong (http://hkumea.hku.hk:80/~mensing/rphome.htm).

Practical applications of RP use via the Web may be found on sites like the

• UCSD/SDSC Tele-Manufacturing Facility Research Project (http://www.sdsc.edu/tmf/), which is creating an automated rapid prototyping capability on the Internet, and
• CyberCut (http://cybercut.berkeley.edu/), an experimental fabrication testbed for an Internet accessible, computerized machining service.

Full-text, E-Conferences, E-Journals

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Full-Text Documents available include:

• Overview reports and articles such as the JTEC/WTEC Panel Report on Rapid Prototyping in Europe and Japan (http://itri.loyola.edu/rp/),
• An Overview Of Rapid Prototyping Technologies In Manufacturing by Dr. A. Dolenc (http://www.cs.hut.fi/~ado/rp/rp.html),
• Industry's Amazing New Instant Prototypes by Gene Bylinsky (http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1998/980112/imt.html), and
• Rapid Prototyping in Foundry Online at http://www.implog.com/foundry/foundrp.htm
• Collections of articles by individuals, such as those by Terry Wohlers of Wohlers Associates (http://www.wohlersassociates.com/), and those by Stephen J. Rock (http://www.rpi.edu/~rocks/),
• Papers from research centres and projects, as with those at Rapid Prototype Development Laboratory at the University of Dayton Research Institute (http://www.udri.udayton.edu/rpdl/)

The Institute of Industrial Technology and Applied Work Science at the University of Bremen - Rapid Prototyping Site (http://www.biba.uni-bremen.de/groups/rp/rp_page.html) not only offers an article on the Introduction to Rapid Prototyping Technology but also contains a classification of rapid prototyping technologies.

Another forum in which full-text documents may be found is the e-conference. Within the rapid prototyping field, there are two Internet Conferences on Rapid Prototyping: the

• Rapid Product Development conference (http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/conferen/dec95/rapidpd/rapidpd.htm), held in 1995-6, and the
• Future of Rapid Prototyping conference (http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/conferen/jun98/forp/), held in 1998. Although the conference dates are past, the background papers remain available.

There appear to be no full-text electronic journals available at present, although the Rapid Prototyping Newsletter is available on the Rapid Prototyping Association of the SME site at http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/find-issues.pl?&&RPA&RPA&.

Details of three journals of relevance are given, however. Both the

• Rapid Prototyping Report (http://www.cadcamnet.com/welcome.htm#RPReport) and the
• Rapid Prototyping Journal (http://www.mcb.co.uk/cgi-bin/journal1/rpj/) sites offer tables of contents, while
• Time-Compression Technologies [formerly Rapid News] (http://www.rapidnews.com/) provides only subscription details.

It is possible to search for items appearing in the free engineering e-journals on the Web. You can use the Engineering E-journal Search Engine (EESE) (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/eese/) for this purpose.

Some documents are also available as part of sites which offer courseware for users to access. An excellent example of such a site is: the Penn State Rapid Prototyping at The Learning Factory (http://www.me.psu.edu/lamancusa/rapidpro/index.htm), which not only includes a tutorial, but also slides and a brief introduction to the RP technology.

Other sites include: The Use of Solid Rapid Prototyping in Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization course notes at http://www.sdsc.edu/tmf/Sig96Notes/RpForSciVis.html, and Reuleaux!, the first WWW CAD/CAM prototyping service coming out of the CyberParts project, which provides a tutorial on the history and design of the Reuleaux (http://madmax.me.berkeley.edu/~willchui/main.html)

Mailing Lists

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For those wishing to interact with others rather than just read (i.e. use mailing lists/ discussion groups), the

• Rapid Prototyping Electronic Mailing List (rp-ml) can be found at http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/, with archives at http://ltk.hut.fi/archives/.
• There is also the Medical RP mailing list archive which can be found at http://www.me.vt.edu/mail/medicalRP/)

Patents

The Chatham Research site (http://members.aol.com/chathamres/ChathamRes.html) announces the availability for sale of 3D Rapid Prototyping Patents 99, a database and search software consists of 475+ patents in CD ROM format on the technology area of rapid prototyping/solid freeform fabrication.

A list of RP-related patents is offered on Zhiwen Zhao's The World of Rapid Prototyping (http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/rpworld.htm) site.

Searchable access to patents may be found on other sites such as

• USPTO Web Patent Databases (http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html) for US patents, the
• United Kingdom Patent Office (http://www.ukpats.org.uk/) for UK and European patents, together with the
• Japanese Patent Office (http://www.jpo-miti.go.jp/index.htm) and the
• Canadian Patents Database (http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/intro-e.html).

Conclusion

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Rapid prototyping is [appropriately] a fast-changing field. You will find that a number of prominent sites which appear in all the Resource Guides mentioned no longer exist, and you should also be aware, as indicated above, of the dates sites were last updated. (State of the Art Review: Rapid Prototyping for Manufacturing, for instance, (http://mtiac.hq.iitri.com/MTIAC/pubs/rp/rpintro.htm) was only accurate as of March 1993). However, I hope I have shown that there is still a lot of interesting information out there.

It is, of course, just a taste of what is available on the Web - there are many other sites I could have included. Note that most of these &endash; and many other - resources can be retrieved via the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) at http://www.eevl.ac.uk/. For further information, you can try Recent Advances in Manufacturing (RAM) (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ram/), a free database containing many references to articles on rapid prototyping, rapid tooling, and other exciting fields.

Jim Corlett

(The Editor: You can email to Jim via: cimware@cimwareukandusa.com. For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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A summary of all references / hot-web-links mentioned in this article

http://intell-lab.engi.cf.ac.uk/franck/RPB.html

http://www.wohlersassociates.com/

http://www.cc.utah.edu/~asn8200/rapid.html

http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/rpworld.htm

http://azizia.dtm-corp.com/~nelson/rpindex1.html

http://cadserv.cadlab.vt.edu/bohn/RP.html

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2549/proto.htm

http://www.icom.cz/mcltd/RPdatabase.html

http://nak.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/rpjp/

http://members.aol.com/RonGraham1/innovate.html

http://www.wohlersassociates.com/

http://www.imeche.org.uk/imeche2/rpma/index2.htm

http://www.apri-rapid.it/

http://ltk.hut.fi/firpa/

http://www.sme.org/rpa/

http://hkumea.hku.hk/~CRPDT/RP&T.html

http://www.adl.dmt.csiro.au/external/arpa/arpahome.htm

http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena/org/t/tdp/www/home.html

http://www.sanders-prototype.com/

http://www.soligentechnologies.com/

http://www.stratasys.com/

http://helisys.com/

http://www.dtm-corp.com/

http://www.iquest.net/cubital/

http://www.3dsystems.com/

http://www.eos-gmbh.de/

http://www.optomec.com/

http://www.solidconcepts.com/

http://www.materialise.be/

http://www.imcuk.org/

http://www.damvig.com/

http://www.adveng.on.ca/

http://www.promau.it/

http://www.kl-technik.com/

http://www.artcorp.com/

http://www.valla.fr/

http://www.multistation.com/Pages/indexeng.htm

http://rpmi.marc.gatech.edu/

http://www.udri.udayton.edu/rpdl/

http://www-rpl.stanford.edu/

http://www.buckscol.ac.uk/tech/crdm/crdm.html

http://blake.sunderland.ac.uk/~ta5sva/research.html

http://www.wmg.warwick.ac.uk/Research/index.htm

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/meom/Research/rp/index.html

http://www.biba.uni-bremen.de/groups/rp/rp_page.html

http://www.ikp2.uni-stuttgart.de/RP_IKP/Eindex.html

http://www.cadcam.kth.se/public/computer/fff/RP.html

http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/RP_RESEA.HTM

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Lab/8600/clrf.htm

http://hkumea.hku.hk:80/~mensing/rphome.htm

http://www.sdsc.edu/tmf/

http://cybercut.berkeley.edu/

http://itri.loyola.edu/rp/

http://www.cs.hut.fi/~ado/rp/rp.html

http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1998/980112/imt.html

http://www.implog.com/foundry/foundrp.htm

http://www.wohlersassociates.com/

http://www.rpi.edu/~rocks/

http://www.udri.udayton.edu/rpdl/

http://www.biba.uni-bremen.de/groups/rp/rp_page.html

http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/conferen/dec95/rapidpd/rapidpd.htm

http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/conferen/jun98/forp/

http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/find-issues.pl?&&RPA&RPA&

http://www.cadcamnet.com/welcome.htm

http://www.mcb.co.uk/cgi-bin/journal1/rpj/

http://www.rapidnews.com/

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/eese/

http://www.me.psu.edu/lamancusa/rapidpro/index.htm

http://www.sdsc.edu/tmf/Sig96Notes/RpForSciVis.html

http://madmax.me.berkeley.edu/~willchui/main.html

http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/

http://www.me.vt.edu/mail/medicalRP/

http://members.aol.com/chathamres/ChathamRes.html

http://ecoleing.uqtr.uquebec.ca/geniedoc/gmm/productique/rpworld.htm

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

http://www.ukpats.org.uk/

http://www.jpo-miti.go.jp/index.htm

http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/intro-e.html

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ram/

(For more information over the Internet search the entire web via our continuously growing directory of updated Advanced Design And Manufacturing websites and search engines listed by topic).

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My first article in this series tried to point a path through the jungle of Web search tools towards the most efficient way to approach Web searching, in general terms &endash; i.e. which of the many search tools to use in what order. This current article &endash; on product design - and other articles in the series highlight sites on specific topics of potential interest to manufacturing and design engineers.

Contents

• Introduction
• Local lists, resource guides and FAQs
• Institutions, Associations
• Companies
• Research Centres & Higher Education
• Courseware, Design Case Studies and Tutorials
• E-Journals / Full-Text and Bibliographies
• Discussion Lists
• Standards & Patents
• Conclusion
• Summary of websites mentioned in this article

Introduction

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Product design encompasses such a wide range of topics that I can necessarily only skim the surface of many of them, indeed may have missed some. However, some may crop up in subsequent Web Corners, in which case I'll come back to this one and put links in as required.

A useful overview of what design is may be found in the Innovation & Technology Transfer newsletter article on Best Practices in Design (http://www.cordis.lu/itt/itt-en/97-2/dossier.htm), which reviews design practices in some of the companies shortlisted for the European Design Prize. For a much more detailed how-to exposition, see the 299-page textbook on Learning How to Design: A Minds-on, Hands-on, Decision-Based Approach (http://www.srl.gatech.edu/education/ME3110/textbook/textbook.pdf).

A general site devoted to design is The Consummate Design Center (TCDC) (http://www.tcdc.com/), a virtual resource centre for all types of designers. Its purpose is to help promote design principles, methods, and technologies that lead to the creation of quality products and services. [N.B. Some of the sections are incomplete at present].

Putting the whole issue of product design into context, the

• Product Development Forum (http://members.aol.com/drmassoc/pdforum.html) provides a source of information on the product development process as a whole, while the
• Design for Competitive Advantage (http://dfca.larc.nasa.gov/) site also offers a wider context in which to view product design.

A final "general" set of pages worth highlighting is Design inSite (http://www.ipt.dtu.dk/~tl/inspsite/htmsider/home.htm), which aims to be the Designer's guide to manufacturing. It describes various manufacturing processes and materials as well as the products for which they are used. Its purpose is to inspire designers in their design work to consider materials and processes which are new or unknown to them.

Local lists, resource guides and FAQs

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My introductory article mentioned local lists, collections (often compiled by individuals) in very specific subject areas, and slightly more "official" (often produced by companies) specific resource guides and directories.

Local lists include

• Steven Henderson's Design Links (http://users.choice.net/~shender4/englinks.htm)
• Frank de Bakker's Product-Oriented Environmental Management Links (http://www.sms.utwente.nl/vakgr/br/links.htm) for ecodesign, etc., and
• Wolfgang Schloegl's Virtual Manufacturing page (http://www.faps.uni-erlangen.de/persons/schloegl/vm_links.html) for some virtual reality links.

Of course, my two previous Web Corners also constitute local lists which may well be of interest to product designers: polymer processing (see above) (http://www.cimwareukandusa.com/HotEngWebSites.html#PolimProc) and rapid prototyping (also above) (http://www.cimwareukandusa.com/HotEngWebSites.html#RapidProto).

In terms of resource directories, Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/) has a significant section on product and process design.

Three key areas to start browsing in engineering design are the:

• Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/), again, which has an extensive section on engineering design,
• WWW Virtual Library: Mechanical Engineering (http://CDR.stanford.edu/html/WWW-ME/home.html), and
• Resources for Mechanical Design/Engineering (http://www.rxn.con/~demu001/mech_des2.html).

Strathclyde University's CAD Centre produces Engineering Information Guides (http://www.cad.strath.ac.uk/EIG/EIG.html) which also focus on the influence of design across engineering disciplines.

For topics on other areas of design, the

• Design Library at http://www.dh.umu.se/design_lib/design_library.html has links to sites on industrial design, interaction design, environmental design and graphic design, while the
• Core77 Design Network (http://www.core77.com/) offers a range of resources in industrial design.
• ADAM, the Art, Design, Architecture & Media Information Gateway (no link with this ADAM journal) (http://www.adam.ac.uk/) is also a useful source of information on other areas of design.

Resource directories may also be found for more specific topics. To give a flavour of the range involved, here are a few examples:

• Psychology of Invention (http://hawaii.cogsci.uiuc.edu/invent/invention.html), a gateway to three collections relevant to the theme of the psychology of invention, specifically concerned with the thought processes that inventors employ to create new artifacts and processes.
• CAD/CAM World (http://www.cam.org/~flamy/cadcam.html) and
• CAD/CAM & Graphics Sites Around the World (http://www.flash.net/~cdhb/Cadlinks.htm)
• Product Data Management Information Center (http://www.pdmic.com/)
• STEP OnLine Information Service Directory (http://www.nist.gov/step/)
• Rapid Prototyping Resource Centre (http://cadserv.cadlab.vd.edu/bohn/RP.html#WWW/) [see my Web Corner article above for more Rapid Proto sites]
• Concurrent Engineering Toolkit (http://ce-toolkit.crd.ge.com/ce-toolkit/homepage.html)
• UK AutoCAD Reference Centre (http://www.acad.co.uk/)
• EE Design Center (http://www.questlink.com/)
• Tribology: an on-line information resource (http://www.shef.ac.uk/~mpe/tribology/tribo.html)
• The Mechanical Analysis Home Page (http://wwwhighfiber.com/~tes/analysis.htm).

Frequently Asked Questions can be a useful source on information. FAQs in the product design area include the

• FAQ on innovation and product development (http://members.aol.com/RonGraham1/innovate.html).
• The Association of Women Industrial Designers also offers a brief page of FAQs on industrial design (http://www.core77.com:80/AWID/faq.html).

Illustrations of more specific FAQ sites:

• for AutoCAD users, FAQ sites exist for both
  • AutoCAD (http://www.landfield.com/faqs/CAD/AutoCAD-faq/) and
  • AutoLISP (http://www.xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/news/faq/autolisp.html);
• for life cycle analysis/assessment (LCA), try http://tiger.eea.eu.int/projects/EnvMaST/lca/aboutthi.htm;
• for engineering data management/product data management (EDM/PDM), use http://www.johnstark.com/faqs1.html;
• for engineering failures, access http://members.aol.com/RonGraham1/failure1.html

Institutions, Associations

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Professional societies and trade organisations with Web sites include the

• European Design Centre (http://www.edc.nl/), and the
• European Design and Automation Association (http://www.iaehv.nl/users/ldjc/edaa.html).
• In the UK, there are the
  • Institution of Engineering Designers (http://www.ied.org.uk/) and the
  • Design Council (http://www.design-council.org.uk/).

More specialist institutions include:

• the International Ergonomics Association (http://www.spd.louisville.edu/~ergonomics/iea.html)
• the American Design Drafting Association (http://www.adda.org/)
• the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Design Automation (http://kona.ee.pitt.edu/)
• the Society of Concurrent Engineering (http://www.soce.org/index.html)
• the Association of Women Industrial Designers (http://www.core77.com/AWID/)
• Industrial Designers Society of America (http://www.idsa.org/)
• the Society for Experimental Mechanics (http://www.sem.org/)
• the Design Management Institute (http://www.designmgt.org/)
• the Design Research Society (http://www.drs.org.uk/)
• the Design History Society (http://www.brighton.ac.uk/dhs), and
• the Federation of European Simulation Societies (EUROSIM) (http://eurosim.tuwein.ac.at/eurosim/home-eurosim.html).

The Industrial and Graphic Design Association of Mexico has a useful page of links to design organisations worldwide at http://spin.com.mx/~jlatapi/organizations.html.

Companies

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Thousands of companies are now producing their own Web sites. Directories of companies can be found, often on general resource sites such as those mentioned above and others in the same vein:

• on the Yahoo! product design pages (http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Engineering/Mechanical_Engineering/Product_Design/),
• in e-journals such those highlighted below,
• on the larger company sites (see below as well), or on specific sites such as the
• Directory of Design Consultants (http://www.designdirectory.co.uk/),
• DeveloPages (http://www.developages.com/) for product development and manufacturing companies,
• Design Selector Global (http://www.designselectorglobal.co.uk/), or
• GlobalSpec.com (http://www.designinfo.com/), developed by a group of design engineers to link design engineers with engineering product vendors, by building a searchable engineering catalogue of thousands of design-related products available from various vendors in the US.

Many of the individual company sites only provide company information and product details, some (for example, MultiSimplex Experimental Design & Optimization Software at http://www.multisimplex.com/) in greater details than others, but some go much further:

• Granta Design (http://www.granta.co.uk/), whose database system combines selection of materials, manufacturing processes and shape, includes brief tutorials and case studies, as well as hardness conversion charts, solutions to standard problems, designations and equivalents for various alloys, and glossaries.
• Endura Plastics Inc (http://www.endura.com/) includes items on injection moulding and thermoplastics, involving articles on the basics, comparisons of materials, and guides (currently under construction) to mould design and moulded plastic component design
• Bearings manufacturer Industria Engineering offers free downloadable software, directories of manufacturers, pages on problems and solutions, and so on.
• Similarly, the SKF (http://www.skf.com/) site offers a wealth of information on bearings, including the SKF Electronic [Bearings] Handbook.
• Another, more general, handbook is the Eastman Design and Engineering Handbook (http://www.eastman.com/ppbo/design/contents.htm).

More specific data can be found in some of the general resources sites, including:

• the Conversion Tools/Data section of CAD/CAM & Graphics Sites Around the World (http://www.flash.net/~cdhb/Cadlinks.htm), or at company sites like the
• Servo Sizing CGI Resource (http://pmdi.com/php2.php/) a gearmotor sizing program, or
• ESDU International (http://www.esdu.com/).

A further valuable source of information is the Weblinks to Databooks and Datasheets at the University of Cincinnati (http://www.engrlib.uc.edu/databooks/index.html).

Research Centres & Higher Education

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Areas of current research, and the people involved in them, can be traced via directories such as:

• the Design Directory (http://cs.wpi.edu/Research/DD/),
• DesignWeb (http://www.bath.ac.uk/Departments/Eng/design/dweb/)
• Design Research (http://www.tue.nl/bwk/gom/design/index.html) (which provides direct links to design research groups in the Netherlands);
• or via specific design issues (e.g. artificial intelligence in design at http://www.cs.wpi.edu/Research/aidg/AIinD-hotlist.html.

Most in